The Australian division of European-based online lender Spotcap has recently announced a partnership with New Zealand’s Heartland Bank, which will be providing the fintech with an AU$20 million funding facility to help grow Spotcap across Australia and expand into New Zealand.
Spotcap has lent $35 million to Australian small businesses over its first 19 months of operations, with the book growing by 450 per cent over the year to December 2016 as the fintech expanded its distribution capability through deals with broking networks.
Prior to this funding, Spotcap’s Australian operations, launched in early 2015, had been funded through the company’s global facilities in place in Europe, with AU$110 million raised in global equity and debt funding. Jeff Greenslade, CEO of Heartland Bank said,
Our partnership with Spotcap highlights Heartland Bank’s commitment to fintech and digital banking, in line with both our own internal offerings and our investments in the sector. We are delighted to gain further exposure to online SME lending and look forward to working with Spotcap to grow its Australian operations.
The funding facility is also the company’s first to come from a bank, which Lachlan Heussler, managing director of Spotcap Australia and New Zealand, said is important in terms of validating Spotcap’s business model. He added,
This also allows us, as a group globally, to diversify our funding sources by investor types. It’s important for us to have diverse funding sources for our balance sheet as we start to scale the business operations globally.
With Spotcap providing SMEs with access to unsecured credit lines and business loans of up to $250,000, Spotcap states it grew its Australian loan book by 450 percent from December 2015 to December 2016. The global business has issued over $90 million in credit to SMEs around the world.
Upon torching its first year in May last year, the business reported it had hit $11 million in credit lines and loans in Australia.
